California's in the middle of quite a storm this week. We
had 100-mph winds a few days ago, the main effect of which
was that we thought our neighbor's birch tree was trying
to peel the roof off our bedroom -- all night long, which
meant the following day we were a little blearier than usual.
Today, though, the worst of the flooding had drained (I
haven't read about mudslides down south yet, but they
generally follow the rains like robins), and the drive was
peppered with tiny sprinkles hardly more than a heavy
mist for most of the commute. And of course, since my work
is west of home, I was traveling with the sun at my back:
the perfect opportunity to see rainbows.
The ancient Greeks believed that rainbows were the sign
of the goddess Iris; the Old Testament says that they're
God's promise to Noah not to destroy the world by flood
again. Newton, of course, says that they're due to the
refraction of sunlight through the collective effect of
millions of tiny prisms; computer graphics specialists
further know that rainbows occur 180 degrees away
from the direction of the light source, at the same angle
as the light source (in this case, our moderate-sized G-type
star) with respect to the vertex normal (i.e., straight up).
And of course, rainbows have featured in popular songs,
in myth and legend, and in the imagery of our psyches
since people have been able to look up at the sky instead
of down at what they were trying to catch and eat (or
back at what was trying to catch and eat them).
I caught a glimpse of one rainbow while I was still in
the tree-lined section of my commute: there, out to
the right, a big band of color punctuated by oaks, pines,
and the bare-limbed liquidambar trees that do such a
glorious impersonation of rural New England in October
and November. I had my two knee-jerk reactions upon
seeing rainbows: first, to hear the final movement from
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony in my imagination, and
second to remember Wordsworth's poem:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So let it be when I am old,
Or let me die!
The child is father to the man,
And I would wish my days to be
Bound each to each with natural piety.
I turned onto the expressway, which has as many trees but
they're spaced farther apart due to four broad traffic lanes, a
pair of bicycle lanes at the right-hand edge of each direction,
and a pleasantly landscaped median strip. The breadth of
sky that this permitted showed me a matching bit of rainbow
at the other side of the arc: a full rainbow, something of
a rarety here where rains are normally patchy and spotty.
I craned my neck forward, looking under the edge of the
car's roof to see if the whole iridescent arch were present,
crossing the sky --
And realized that if I had been in the M.G., I would have been
able to see the whole rainbow all at once, unimpeded by the
sheet of insulating steel and upholstery that protected me
from the elements. If the top hadn't been down, I would have
pulled over and *put* it down. (And if this were the Italian
cars list, I'd say "I would have reached up and put it down
before the light changed." Ah, me.)
Of course, those more reasonable among you (what? this IS
the Britcars list, isn't it? Who you callin' reasonable, boy?)
would point out that I would also be soaking wet, with a
stained interior and rain seeping into my jacket as I waited
at the lights, with the mucky spray from the roadway being
driven into my forehead as I followed the other cars ahead
of me.
That's true, of course, though I've got a selection of car caps,
windproof and waterproof jackets, and scarves in a selection
of Tartans (Lindsay and Marshall being the two I wear most
often, as one of my first European ancestors on this continent
was a Lindsay and one of Kim's first was a Marshall). I'm
not entirely unprepared for bad weather in an open car; I've
driven M.G.s top-down through the snow before, and I hope
to do it again one day. And a tonneau cover would go a long
way toward protecting the interior, as well as looking about as
cool as anything this side of a Blower Bentley and a leather
helmet. (Just keep the scarf out of the spokes, Isadora!)
But that's just equivocating with the Devil at hell's gate. The
plain truth, the insight that always carries bad news with it, is
that I missed this rainbow. To secure for myself a little comfort,
to keep my clothes from getting clammy and my cheeks from
getting chilly, I gave up a rare chance to see a miracle of nature --
maybe not as great a miracle as Half Dome, or Haleakala, or
Ayer's Rock, but a miracle none the less. For a few minutes of
cozy, no-risk anesthesia, I sold out on a transcendent beauty.
So what about you folks? What do you see in your own lives,
as 1995's opening measures sound, where you are at risk of selling
out on transcendent beauty for a few minutes of being comfortably
numb? No, this isn't a pledge drive for New Year's resolutions;
they're nothing but a gentleman's agreement to justify what's wrong
with our lives without actually having to do anything about it. This
is about visions for the coming year, visions you and I can live into
instead of missing, like a rainbow hidden behind the roof.
I don't know about you, but I have a really pristine 1982 Datsun
280ZX for sale. Life's too short to miss any more rainbows just
to keep my hat dry.
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